All that is right and wrong with sports, video games, girls, beer, and everything in between.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Yogi Chogi

Random thoughts I've had while running through San Andreas yet again:

I’ve been kinda quiet lately, but only because I’m expanding my non-revenue internet empire. I’m in the (slow) process of launching at least three more blogs. One will be a travel-y thing, discussing my newfound habit of walking across entire cities, and it should launch with pieces on Seoul, New York, Baltimore, Fukuoka, San Francisco, Chicago, and of course Lawrence. Tentatively, you can find it at http://walkingacrosscities.blogspot.com/, but there’s no there there yet. I’ll also start another travel-y blog on Korean tourism, designed for expats in Korea. It will probably focus initially on (surprise) bars, specifically expat bars in Seoul and other Korean cities. This blog will be more travel guide-ish, as I’m hoping it will actually serve some sort of purpose. It won’t include crazy drunken booze and girl stories (those will stay here at sportsthatareright), but more a Lonely Planet/Rough Guides sort of thing. If you live in Korea or plan to visit, it should be a resource, but if you are in the States with no plans to go to Korea, it will probably be on the dull side. I don’t have an address for this one yet, though it should be a major undertaking for me. Finally, for no good reason, I’m starting a fashion blog. You heard me. It’s at http://fashionably-lame.blogspot.com/, and it should be up by next week. There’s even a Twitter (ugh) for that one, details on the site.

Radio is strange these days, although maybe only in Baltimore. I suppose I haven’t listened to much radio in the last 10 years, excepting of course hard core right wing talk during roadtrips. I’ve been listening to a bit as of late (while driving my Mom’s car the grueling 17 minutes to the nearest Taco Bell) and I’ve noticed that the DJs constantly belittle the songs that they play. At first, it was just on obvious old duds like Limp Bizkit (I don’t know why they were playing it, nor why I was listening; probably because there’s only 4 presentable stations in Balto - and one of those is actually from DC and comes in fuzzy - and it seems they all go to commercial at the same time, or in this case three went to commercial and one went to Limp Bizkit) but in the last week I’ve noticed the DJs openly insulting current playlist hits. In an unrelated note, if I teach grammar at the next school I work at, I should have the students diagram the previous sentence. Fortunately, I don’t teach grammar, and clearly shouldn’t.

Oh yeah, and it looks like I am going back to teach English in Korea. I suppose I may have buried the lead. More on this story as it develops.

I’ve recently come across the term “rising,” as in, during the summer, a kid between sophomore and junior year is a “rising junior.” I’ve seen this term used a lot in the Baltimore Sun. Again, like the radio jocks insulting their own product, I am not sure if this is a Baltimore/East Coast thing or if it’s some new-fangled term. It was certainly never used in my day in the midwest. In fact, I don’t know what term we did use. Probably just “I’m going to be a junior” or “I just finished sophomore year.” I really can’t think of a succinct alternative for these periods of academic limbo. Of course, not surprisingly, I’m completely against it, as it’s either East Coast elitist bullshit or its something that wasn’t around in my day - therefore bad. It’s hard work being both an old school midwestern populist and an urban elitist early adapter.

I saw a bartender with a shirt that says “You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.” True dat.

Like you, I have a large number of Facebook friends that I’m not really friends with. In many of these cases, I don’t know why I added these people to begin with, or accepted their request. I presume I did so: a) from curiosity about what they look like now, b) because they were cooler than me in junior high and I’m a shallow person that enjoys the validation, c) (whoa!) several of my actual friends are friends with them, so it would be rude for me not to be, and d) because I’m a shameless self promoter. Somehow, I probably have no less than 40 such people in my friend list. Why don’t I just delete them? After all, these are people that I wouldn’t even bother to send a message to if I happen to be in their town. Two reasons, the first being the aforementioned shameless self-promotion. The other is perhaps my favorite thing about the Facebook. See, sometimes these distant faux friends get tagged in a picture or two of some friend of theirs that I don’t know at all. Then, due to Facebook settings, I get to look at ridiculous photo albums posted by total strangers, oftentimes including hilarious drunken events. Seeing pictures of complete strangers making total asses of themselves gives me great joy. By the way, I know I’ve put up some less than sober pics myself, but I change the settings so only people I’m actually friends with can see them. You should do the same. I’d be worried about this warning curbing a source of entertainment for me, but I know that the far flung “friends” on the Facebook will never actually read this blog, so I’m golden.